Mapping Asia Plants: Historical outline and review of sources on floristic diversity in North Asia (Asian Russia)

North Asia – the Asian part of Russia – is a vast territory that occupies 1/3 of Asia, or about 13 100 000 sq. km. Floristic exploration of North Asia was bolstered in the first half of the 18th century when the emperor Peter I the Great founded the Academy of Sciences (currently, the Russian Academy of Sciences). The first complete flora of the Russian Empire was published in the middle of the 19th century by C.F. von Ledebour, and a wealth of North Asian floristic data had accumulated by the beginning of the 20th century. Under the guidance of the Botanical Institute in Leningrad (St. Petersburg), the “Flora of the USSR” (1944–1964) was initiated to consolidate this vast body of floristic knowledge. Following this Flora, two modern interregional compendia (“Vascular Plants of the Soviet Far East” and “Flora of Siberia”) were published in the 1980s and 1990s, which serve as the taxonomic foundation for the newest regional floras and checklists of the last twenty years. According to our statistics, which are expansive but not comprehensive, there are at least 300 books devoted to the flora of different regions of North Asia. The newest “Checklist of the Flora of Asian Russia” published in 2012 listed 6961 species and subspecies of vascular plants. Here, we provide a short review of the main references on vascular flora within all 27 administrative regions of North Asia.